"Well, it comes to this, then," said Virgilia. "We must give them
something definite--a fully outlined--projet; and we must give it to
them as soon as possible." She cleared away the ruck of evening papers
from the library table, sent her younger sister off with arithmetic and
geography to the dining-room, extracted a few sheets of monogrammed paper
from the silver stationery-rack close by, and turned on two or three more
lights in the electrolier overhead. "Now, then. We'll choke off that
foolish notion of theirs; we'll smother it before it has a chance to
mature."

She put a pen into Daffingdon's hand, with the open expectation of
immediate results. She herself always thought better with a pen in her
hand and a writing-pad under it; no doubt a painter would respond to the
same stimulus.

Daffingdon bit at the end of the penholder and made a dog-ear on the
topmost of the steel-gray sheets.

"Come," said Virgilia. "Whatever follies may have begun to churn in their
poor weak noddles, we will not draw upon the early pages of the local
annals, we will not attempt to reconstruct the odious architecture of the
primitive prairie town. Come; there are twelve large lunettes, you say?"

"I had thought of a general colour-scheme in umber and sienna; though
Giles's idea of shading the six on the left into purple and olive and the
six on the right into----"

"Dear me! Can we hope to impress Andrew P. Hill with any such idea as
that? No; we must have our theme, our subject--our series of subjects."

"I don't want to be simply pictorial," said Daffingdon reluctantly; "and
surely you can't expect me to let my work run into mere literature."

"They're business-men," returned Virgilia. "For our own credit--for our
own salvation, indeed--we must be clear-cut and definite. Even if we are
artists we mustn't give those hard-headed old fellows any chance to
accuse us of wabbling, of shilly-shallying. We must try to be as
business-like as they are. So let's get in our work--and get it in
first."

Daffingdon's eyes roamed the rugs, the hangings, the furniture. "'The
Genius of the City,'" he murmured vaguely, "'Encouraging--Encouraging'--"

"Yes, yes," responded Virgilia quickly, by way of further encouragement.

"Or--or--'The Triumphal March of Progress through Our'----" Daffingdon
confusedly dipped the wrong end of the penholder into the big sprawling
inkstand.

Virgilia's teeth began to feel for her lips, and her eyebrows to draw
themselves down in an impatient little frown of disappointment. Not
through "Our Midst," she hoped. What was the matter with her idol? What
had he done with all his fund of information? What had become of his
ideas, his imagination? She felt that if she were to approach a bit
closer to his pedestal and sound him with her knuckles he would be found
hollow. What a calamity in such a discovery! She put her hand behind her
back and kept her distance.

"'The Genius of the City,'" she mused; "'The Star of Empire.' Those might
do for single subjects but not for a general scheme. 'The March of
Progress '--that might be better as a broad working basis, although----"
She saw the "lady" seated on the cogged wheel beneath the factory chimney
and stopped.

"'The Prairie-Schooner'--'The Bridging of the Mississippi'--'The Last of
the Buffaloes'--' The Corner-Stones of New Capitols'----" pursued
Daffingdon brokenly.

"Nor I. Come, let me tell you; I have it: 'The History of Banking in all
Ages'! There, what do you think of that?" she asked, rising with an air
of triumph.

Dill hesitated. "I don't believe I know so very much about the history of
banking."

"Don't you? But I do--enough and more than enough for the present
purpose. Come, tell me, isn't that a promising idea? What a series it
would make!--so picturesque, so varied, so magnificent!"

Daffingdon looked up at his Egeria; her visible inspiration almost cowed
him. "Isn't that a pretty large theme?" he questioned. "Wouldn't it
require a good deal of thought and study----?"

"Thought? Study? Surely it would. But I think and study all the time!
Let me see; where shall we begin? With the Jews and Lombards in England,
Think what you have!--contrast, costumes, situations, everything. Then
take the 'Lombards' in Italy itself; the founding of the earliest banks
in Venice, Lucca, Genoa, Florence; the glamour of it, the spectacularity
of it, the dealings with popes and with foreign kings! And there were the
Fuggers at Augsburg who trafficked with emperors: houses with those
step-ladder gables, and people with puffed elbows and slashed sleeves and
feathers of all colours in those wide hats. And then the way that kings
and emperors treated the bankers: Edward the Second refusing to repay his
Florentine loans and bringing the whole city to ruin; Charles the First
sallying out to the Mint and boldly appropriating every penny stored
there--plain, barefaced robbery. Then, later, the armies of Revolutionary
France pillaging banks everywhere--grenadiers, musketeers and cuirassiers
in full activity. Among others, the Bank of Amsterdam--the one that
loaned all those millions of florins to the East India Company. And that
brings in, you see, turbans, temples, jewels, palm-trees, and what not
besides----"

"So much trouble," breathed Daffingdon; "so much effort; such an expense
for costumes."

"And if you want to enlarge the scheme," pursued Virgilia, waiving all
considerations of trouble, effort and expense, "so as to include coining,
money-changing and all that, why, think what you have then! The brokers
at Corinth, the mensarii in the Roman Forum. And think of the ducats
designed by Da Vinci and by Cellini! And all the Byzantine coins in
Gibbon--the student's edition is full of them! Why, there are even the
Assyrian tablets--you must have heard about the discovery of the records
of that old Babylonian bank. Think of the costumes, the architecture, the
square curled beards, the flat winged lions, and all. Why, dear me, I see
the whole series of lunettes as good as arranged for, and work laid out
for a dozen of you, or more!" cried Virgilia, as she pounced upon a sheet
of paper and snatched the pen from Dill.

"Nonsense!" she returned. "Four or five of you could manage it very
handily. You, and Giles, and----"

"The Academy would expect recognition," said Dill. "One of the professors
for a third. And somebody or other from the Warren, I suppose, for a
fourth."

"Three subjects apiece, then," said Virgilia. "Go in and win!--By the
way, did I mention Phidion of Argos? He was one of the primitive coiners.
And then there was Athelstane, who regulated minting among the early
Saxons...."